


take it easy (it ain't easy)

by stellark



Category: Pentagon (Korea Band)
Genre: Angst, I Will Go Down With This Ship, I'm so sorry, Light Angst, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 14:05:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16535990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellark/pseuds/stellark
Summary: Changgu’s arm will never be more than a platonic reassurance around his shoulder, never brave enough to dip down and show him who here really loves him. If that means Hongseok will be blind to the mistiness of Changgu’s eyes, right here and right now, then let it be.Hongseok is so much more than his best friend.





	take it easy (it ain't easy)

**Author's Note:**

> based on [this](https://youtu.be/QlopZ3cf2-g)

“Wow. Okay. You look, um, really good.”

Changgu’s words are lilted, his lips failing to make sound, choking around his own tongue. He inhales a little, sharply, keeping his eyes pointedly trained on the patch of the wall where the paint is a little darker and away from Hongseok’s back, now clad in whatever remotely _cool_ item he could dig out of his closet. He’s aware his hands are trembling a little in his lap and he clenches them tightly in an effort to stop them, watching his knuckles whiten in the bottom of his view.

Hongseok lets out a sound of frustration, his eyebrows knit and his teeth gnawing into his bottom lip. “Oh my god, you’re really bad at this, you know that?” He tugs are the hem of his loose black shirt and tips his head to look at himself in the mirror, not that it makes much difference. Changgu thinks he looks the same from any angle -- so, so stunning.

“You didn’t keep me around for three years without knowing my sense of fashion is, in fact, runway worthy,” he spits back, the sarcasm masking any kind of awkwardness in his tone. He hopes it works, hopes his voice isn’t as whiny as he thinks it is. It’s true, partly, because having an instagram model for a friend helps. As in Shinwon will never shut up about how the colours in _every single outfit_ Changgu wears don’t complement one another. He supposes one day he might as well show up naked; god knows nothing will satisfy Ko Shinwon.

Hongseok doesn’t seem to notice, instead disappearing back into the closet. A series of rustling sounds fill the air while Changgu takes this as his chance to pull his phone out of his pocket and keyboard-spam to make it look like he’s got actual people to text.

“Ggu, where’s my sweater?”

“You’ve got five thousand and one sweaters. Which?”

“The grey one, with the turtleneck.”

“You can’t wear a turtleneck; it’s going to be forty degrees there. Hyojong’s parties get _wild_.”

Hongseok huffs as he emerges, thankfully, dressed. Changgu flicks through his Instagram feed lazily, his eyes avoiding the way Hongseok bends over and starts sorting through piles of clothes. 

“I want to look good,” Hongseok whines, like a child demanding an ice cream when the truck drives by. “Yujin’s going to be there.”

Changgu’s head snaps up at this, something hot coiling in his chest. “Yujin?”

“Yeah, Yujin. The one in my chem lab, what about her?”

“I - She’s in your chem lab?”

Hongseok turns to give him a disbelieving stare at this, his hands still fixing his hair in the mirror. “Since last year, Ggu. Are you alright?”

“I just - So what what she’s coming?”

Hongseok’s hands actually disentangle from his hair this time. Changgu knows he’s being glared at, and he busies himself with _Candy Crush._

“You know she’s like, really cute. And she broke up with her boyfriend. A month ago. Since then, um, we’ve gotten close.”

Hongseok’s face reddens a little bit, crimson painting the apples of his cheeks. Changgu wants to crush his phone rather than the sugary images on screen, his teeth clenched. He knows Yujin and it’s not like he has anything against her. She’s pretty; oval-faced and a button nose and big, doe eyes. She also happens to be sweet and chipper and one of the coolest people on the planet, one who’s willing to binge watch _Grey’s Anatomy_ with them all day in the library rather than actually accomplish anything, bring them real food and flush their instant ramen down the toilet when she receives word that they’ve been working for seven straight hours to make up for the aforementioned lost study period. Changgu likes her, and he knows Hongseok likes her, just, well, he didn’t expect Hongseok to like her in _that_ sense of the word.

Bitterly, he supposes that there wasn’t much hope in the first place.

“You’ve got a good chance with her,” he says, giving him a lopsided smile he hopes doesn’t look too forced. Hongseok buys it, returning it shyly as he finally settles on a simple hairstyle that Changgu thinks suits him a little too well, shows a little too much forehead. Then again, Changgu’s seen Hongseok with a rat’s nest rather than a scalp on rough morning when they both drank too much the night before, stumbling over one another in their rush to get to the toilet. Even then, with his eyes red and nose running and bangs plastered to his face with sweat Hongseok might have been the most beautiful thing Changgu had ever seen.

He shoves these thoughts to a remote corner of his mind, shutting off his phone and falling back on the bed sheets. They smell like lavender and fresh laundry because Hongseok smells like lavender and fresh laundry, an unusual but intoxicating scent Changgu’s grown comfortable with over the years. 

Too comfortable, apparently, when Hongseok flops down on the mattress next to him, the warmth of his front bleeding into Changgu’s back and blossoming onto his face. He buries his face into the sheets, hopes it hides how flushed he is, because they’re _spooning._

“I don’t know, Ggu,” Hongseok says worriedly, and Changgu can literally _hear_ how his brow has pinched and his lip is between his teeth again. He can’t help but find it so infuriatingly _cute_ , and hates that Hongseok has this effect on him, has always had this effect on him.

“Look, Seokie,” he starts, cramming up the courage to use the nickname that’s still so uncertain on his tongue, turning onto his side to face Hongseok dead-on, “You’re hot, smart, caring, you can speak a bajillion languages, cook a killer _samgyeopsal_ , you’re not the slob that most university kids are and you work out five days a week. If that’s not top notch boyfriend material, I don’t know what the fuck is.”

_Boyfriend material._

My _boyfriend material._

The smile that Hongseok gives him at this, the little quirk of his lips and glint of his eye, makes Changgu’s insides swirl like a soup of confused emotions and painful revelations. 

“Thank you, Ggu,” Hongseok says quietly, and Changgu can’t help the dopey smile that spreads on his face. Hongseok’s cheek is pressed against the blankets, his eyes not meeting Changgu’s, and he’s tracing slow circles in the fabric of Changgu’s sweater, his long fingers warm yet separated from Changgu’s skin with a layer of fabric.

It’s here Changgu knows that he’s utterly, utterly fucked. It’s here he understands that no, he never stood a fucking chance in the first place, that all the times he lay on Shinwon’s floor with tears tracing down his face he had no business crying over something so unreachable. Hongseok’s just his best friend, his _straight_ best friend, and they’re two straight guys trying to hit up girls at a party tonight. That’s how it should be. That’s how Hongseok thinks it is.

But it’s _not_. Of course Changgu had gone and fucked it all up, caught feelings for someone who could never reciprocate them. He hadn’t even known it until he’d realized that the way he loved Hongseok wasn’t entirely platonic, that platonic relationships don’t involve wanting to taste the inside of his mouth and run his hands through his hair and take him out to dinner. Preferably all at once.

He’s just so _confused_ , for fuck’s sake, and he hates how things can’t just be simple. That he can’t just grin at Hongseok and congratulate him for getting a girl he’s crushed on for months, that he can’t find another girl of his own to pine over with Hongseok standing behind him as a wingman. Changgu doesn’t _want_ a girl. Changgu wants Hongseok, all of Hongseok, everything Hongseok has to offer. 

Maybe he’s just thrown himself at the feet of the statue he’s built out of his best friend, at the pedestal he instantly thrust him upon the first day Hongseok gave him an insecure glance and shuffled over his school supplies so Changgu could sit next to him in class. Maybe it’ll never work out. But after three years of toeing the line between loving Hongseok as a brother and pathetically wanting him, he’s so, so, tired.

He’s tired of the way Hongseok will never smile at him as if he’s his whole world, the way Changgu does when his back is turned. He’s tired of the fact that post-workout Hongseok, with his flushed face and sweat soaked hair, and the numerous cold showers that follow, is just another unreachable, untouchable figure, another haunting regret in his life full of what-ifs. 

Changgu is tired of throwing himself against a solid wall, screaming his lungs out and shedding endless tears over someone on the other side, someone who can’t and won’t hear him. He’s spent three years trying to work a crack into the brick, to maybe show Hongseok that hey, maybe he’d like to more than friends, but he’s bruised and bloodied and battered. 

Hongseok is deaf and ignorant and flinging himself after every girl he thinks is remotely dateable. If that means that he’ll show up at Changgu’s bedroom window at three in the morning, shaking with sobs and palms bearing crescent-shaped indents from his nails digging in, so be it. Changgu’s arm will never be more than a platonic reassurance around his shoulder, never brave enough to dip down and show him who here really loves him. If that means Hongseok will be blind to the mistiness of Changgu’s eyes, right here and right now, then let it be.

Hongseok is so much more than his best friend.

“I - I don’t really want to go to the party tonight.”

Hongseok’s eyes flicker upwards, his brow pinching again, his lower lip jutting out.

“Why? Are you sick?”

“I feel a little nauseous. Can’t we just stay home tonight and you can - you can call Yujin and hang out tomorrow?” he keeps the poison at bay, his tone deceptively even.

“C’mon, Ggu, please. You know I really want to see Yujin.”

“Of course you do. You always do. What’s so fucking special about her, anyways? Enough to drag me out when I’m not feeling well and force me to third wheel?” he spits. Tears are threatening to spill now, he tips his head up and inhales, exhales. 

“I - you - Ggu, are you okay? Why are you always so pissy whenever I bring up Yujin?”

“Fuck Yujin. I mean - please don’t, I just - can you just consider _me_ , for once in your life, you complete asshole!”

Hongseok’s eyes widen visibly at that; Changgu hates how his voice has raised to almost a scream, and Hongseok stiffens, his hand pulling back. Changgu sits up now, glaring down at Hongseok’s startled face and feeling out of control. He tilts his head back, tries to inhale, but it feels like there’s a pillow over his face and candles behind his eyelids.

“What the _fuck_ do you mean?” Hongseok shoots back, already on the defense. “You know you’re always my number one, before _any_ girl.”

“Number one, huh? Your best friend? Maybe I’m not, Yang Hongseok. Maybe, for three years, I’ve wanted to do -- _this._ ”

By “this”, he means lying back down beside Hongseok, cupping his face in his hands, and pressing their mouths together.

Hongseok tastes exactly like how Changgu expects -- mint toothpaste and fucking lavender. Changgu squeezes his eyes shut, lets his tears drip down his nose, only focusing on the feeling of Hongseok’s cheekbones under his thumbs, his lips against his, how _right_ this feels yet so fucking wrong. Hongseok is both the brightest part of his day and the reason he cries himself to sleep more often than not. Hongseok is sunshine on a cold winter morning, he’s the comfort of a crackle of thunder too many antagonizing seconds after the lightning strikes, he’s the slippers when your feet are cold and he’s the first sip of a hot chocolate on days when the cold autumn air penetrates his sweaters. In this moment it’s just them, Changgu and Hongseok, Hongseok and Changgu, and they’ve never been anything more than best friends.

He’s kissing his best friend.

_He’s kissing his best fucking friend._

Pulling apart makes him feel so cold, but he does it anyways, jerking back with his hands flying to his mouth and his vision a blur of colour and light, Hongseok’s face lost amidst the smears. He can’t seem to fucking breathe, can’t seem to fucking think, he thinks he’s sobbing and shaking but he’s lost all control. There’s no way he just did that. He thinks he might throw up if he keeps breathing, or scream, or fling himself at Hongseok, which would be the worst option.

“Oh.”

It’s a single syllable, a breathless exhale, and Changgu’s heart shatters all over again. He wants to run now, out the door and into the cold snow where he can howl his pain like a wild animal. He’s just destroyed a friendship of three years, and for _what?_

For three seconds of euphoria. Three fucking seconds.

“I’m sorry,” is the first thing he manages to say, and it sounds so fucking cliche. This is the scene where Hongseok confesses his undying love to Changgu, the way it works in the dramas they watch together, sharing a blanket and cheap popcorn in the dead of the night, Changgu stubbornly insisting that his eyes are only sweating, Hongseok laughing his tinkling laugh and swiping the dampness away with the pads of his thumbs.

It’s not going to happen here. It’s not going to happen. _It’s not going to ha-_

“I’m sorry, too.”

Changgu’s eyes fly open, take a moment to adjust to the light. “W-What did you just say?”

“I said, I’m sorry,” Hongseok shoots back, and he sits up, exhaling through his nostrils in frustration, one hand carding through his hair and rumpling his pristine hairstyle. “I didn’t - you’re jealous? Of - of Yujin? Are you not straight?”

“I don’t know,” Changgu mutters, his eyes trained on the floor. he ignores the first two questions.

“What about Eunbin? Didn’t you like her?”

“Yeah, I did, but I also - I like you, too, okay? I’m so fucking sorry, I’ve just gone and fucked things up again, I didn’t mean to -”

“Do it again.”

“W-What?”

Changgu’s head snaps up, his eyes blown wide, turns to face Hongseok. His best friend is drawing circles on the blanket with one long finger, avoiding his gaze and mumbling his words.

“I wasn’t ready back there. So try it again, I guess.”

Changgu doesn’t think this is reality. He shifts on his heels, hand coming up to brush Hongseok’s cheek, feel the smooth skin beneath his fingertips, trying not to let them visibly tremble. He tips Hongseok’s chin up with one hand. Hongseok’s eyes are closed, his expression strangely serene. 

Slowly, he leans forward, and his lips are on Hongseok’s again and he never wants to move. He’s soft and accepting, unlike the tenseness of the previous time, and Changgu wonders if this is what he’s really been dreaming of, for all these years. Hongseok’s not kissing back, but that’s alright. Changgu is content to let his eyes drift shut and breathe in Hongseok’s scent, let the warmth swirl in his chest and the pain ebb away.

Hongseok pulls back.

Changgu’s initial reaction is _cold_ , and his second is _of fucking course._

Tears really do pool in his eyes this time, he swipes at them furiously with the back of his hand and tries not to sniffle, letting his head drop onto his chest as Hongseok’s voice sounds. His shoulders are trembling, and he is too. How could he have expected anything? How could he have ever thought he was good enough for Hongseok to reciprocate his feelings?

“I’m sorry. I thought - I thought I could try, because you’re so amazing, but - but I’m not - not gay.” 

He sounds genuinely apologetic, like he tried giving Changgu a chance, and just couldn’t. Internally Changgu wants to scream. Externally, he gives Hongseok a weak smile and laughs a little, thick and watery. He slides off the bed and stands with his back to Hongseok.

“I’m so stupid, aren’t I?” he chuckles, stomping his foot like a child. Another giggle spills past his lips. “I really thought you could - you know, love me? After leading me on like that.”

“What do you mean, ‘leading you on’?”

“You took me out to sushi and asked me about my non-existent love life!” Changgu spits, the memory bringing a fresh surge of pain. “Isn’t that a date?”

“I was just being nice, as _friends_. You know, straight friends,” Hongseok protests, and it comes as no real surprise that Changgu had interpreted it wrong from the start, that everything is nothing at all.

“You’re such a _tease_ , you know that?” he throws back, unable to keep the anger out of his voice. “‘Oh Changgu, you’re so cute,’” he mocks, and Hongseok blanches. “‘Oh Changgu, you’re really hot, oh Changgu, you’re so funny and nice and smart and -’” 

“That’s what you said to me,” Hongseok says weakly. “What’s the diff-”

“The difference is that I love you!”

Silence. Painful, tense, heavy silence, the kind that’s never settled between the two of them before. Not once in their three years of friendship had it been this strained, this terrible. It’s always been easy and comfortable between Hongseok and Changgu, just the two of them, lounging around and stuffing their faces and watching their respective movies or cramming for their assignments. No longer is that memory a reassuring light at the end of the tunnel - no longer is it something he can always look forward to; Hongseok and him never being awkward. It’s broken now, he’s broken it now.

Changgu’s world is shattered at his feet. He chokes out the last word, lets the dread flood him like an icy wave, dousing him in freezing water. He’s sinking, and there’s no above, no light to guide him or show him where there’s any more hope, because there is none.

He’s just lost all of it, and had he been thinking rationally, he should have realized that it was a foolish, stupid string to cling onto in the first place, fragile and barely there.

“I hope it works out with Yujin tonight," he says evenly. “You two would be cute together.” He doesn’t watch for the reaction, instead slinging his school bag over his shoulder and reaching for the doorknob. As he turns it, opens it, and steps out, Yang Hongseok makes no move to stop him.

**Author's Note:**

> as always, comments and kudos are appreciated! i really do love honggu, i swear :(
> 
> find me on twt @dreamyeo


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